Contents: 1. Sacred Landscape (Introduction;
A)GE/LASTOS PE/TRA; Callichoron Well; The Homeric Hymn: a Re-evaluation),
2. Eleusinian
Gods (Introduction; The Youth in the Great Eleusinian Relief; Eubouleus;
Eubouleus, the Thesmophoria, and the Mysteries), 3. More Gods, the Scenes,
and the Myth of the Mysteries (Iakchos; Eubouleus in the Fifth Century;
The Ninnion Tablet; Eumolpos; Interpretation of Eleusinian Scenes; The
Sacred Drama; Artistic Representations and the Secrets of the Mysteries;
The Birth of a Child in the Mysteries), 4. Conclusions (Iconography; The
Homeric Hymn to Demeter), Appendices (Triptolemos as Child; The Age of
Ploutos; Plouton and Hades in Art; Theos and Thea; Hekate at Eleusis; The
"Omphalos" and the Cult of Dionysus in Eleusis; The Name of the
Telesterion)

Specialists will need to evaluate with care C.'s detailed and superbly
documented arguments for identifying Ploutos, Plouton, Eubouleus, Iakchos
and Eumolpos on various exemplars of the iconography of the Eleusinian
Mysteries, but almost any student of
Greek religion will want to become acquainted with his interpretation of
the Homeric Hymn to Demeter as an aetiological myth for the Thesmophoria
rather than a cult myth of the Mysteries.

The negative argument is
quite
persuasive: the Hymn has nothing about Eubouleus who plays a major part
in the Mysteries (and not much about Triptolemos or Eumolpos), but it has
a lot about Hecate, Demophon and Iambe who do not. (In the Hymn Demeter
sits by a well while in the Mysteries she sits on the "Mirthless Rock,"
but C. has had to find this rock for us and so there is a certain, perhaps
necessary, circularity.)

The positive arguments are somewhat less
persuasive, perhaps because we know so little about the Thesmophoria: the
Hymn's Iambe fits the ritual abuse the women evidently hurled at each
other at the Thesmophoria much better than the peripheral Gephyrismos of
the Mysteries (although Baubo would have been better); Callimachus'
Demeter sits on the ground by a well fasting, and we find the same
elements in the Thesmophoria (but not in the Homeric Hymn, at least not
together and not emphatically); Hekate "looks like a mythic analogue to
the Kourotrophos of cult" (but she is invoked along with Kourotrophos in
the Thesmophoriazusae, and this passage is C.'s only direct
evidence for
her presence in the cult). Kourotrophia also explains the emphasis on
nursing and on Demophon (though not his fiery bath, and C. makes the
wine-skin baby of Thesmophoriazusae too prominent for my taste). C.
finds the kykeon with its kourotrophic pennyroyal better suited to
the Thesmophoria than the Mysteries and interprets the Hymn's comment
(221)
that Demeter drank it "for the rite" as a reference to the older ritual of
the Thesmophoria not the not-yet-established Mysteries. He thereby removes
a strong reason for treating the Hymn as cult myth but must at the
same time ignore what most scholars consider a key testimony to the
Mysteries, Clement's description of the "password" ("I fasted, I drank the
kykeon ... "). Finally C. appears to find no place in the Hymn
for some central elements of the Thesmophoria: tent, rotted pigs, phallic
loaves,
willow branches, Chalcidian pursuit, pomegranate seeds (cf. Dem.
373, 411).

C. himself is not dogmatic about
his interpretation and states in his introduction that "a fresh study of
all extant versions of the myth" is needed. I think this is correct, and
in addition we should keep other abduction and woman-by-well stories in
mind and, more important, the likely context for the delivery of the Hymn.
If the Hymn to Apollo is any indication (and Hesiod's
Theogony may support
this), the longer hymns were competition pieces at major public
gatherings. We know that the quadrennial Eleusinia had contests as early
as the 6th C, perhaps including a rhapsode reciting a hymn to Demeter with
an Eleusinian spin.

In any case, C. is certainly correct to insist
that the Hymn is not a blueprint for the Mysteries, that every Eleusinian
reference need not be to the Mysteries, and this alone makes an essential
contribution to our understanding of Greek cult.